


Every Day a Little Death (The Killing Joke Remix)

by thepurpleswitch (andchimeras)



Category: Sports Night
Genre: Birthday, Character Death, Community: remix_redux, F/M, Gen, POV Alternating, Remix, Written in 2006
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-15
Updated: 2011-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-17 00:21:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andchimeras/pseuds/thepurpleswitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"At nine in the morning on the day of Dan's thirty-fourth birthday, Dana calls Deadly Confections in Midtown and orders a pavlova."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Day a Little Death (The Killing Joke Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phoebesmum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoebesmum/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Every Day a Little Death](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14459) by [phoebesmum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoebesmum/pseuds/phoebesmum). 



At nine in the morning on the day of Dan's thirty-fourth birthday, Dana calls Deadly Confections in Midtown and orders a pavlova. "Extra whip," she says, and arranges to pick it up at five o'clock that evening.

Normally, they do cake after the show, but Dan has been disappearing at 12:01 lately. Lately, he's been hard to find at all. He will be at the six o'clock rundown, though. He's never late for meetings anymore. Never late for work. He never goes missing right before an important interview. He never freaks out. Never offends the network. Never--

Her office is bright, sunlight on her glass desktop, gleaming on brushed steel fittings. She puts her forehead in her hand. Nothing is lately, and saying never begs the question of "when did he last do that at all?" It's been three years. More than three years. Seems like six months. It was so hard to live through the first few weeks, and then Casey was gone, and time seems to have sped up exponentially since then.

She presses her finger over the talk button on her phone--she can see Casey's number on the phone's screen as clearly as if she has already dialled it. She bites her lip, takes a deep breath. She slams the phone down into its cradle.

They do. Not. Need Casey. Anymore.

 

* * *

 

Natalie pulls and pushes the skin on her face, uses her fingertips to stretch the laugh lines away--what was ever that fucking funny?--smooths her forehead. She does not frown into the mirror.

"What are you doing?" Jeremy asks, taking his toothpaste and toothbrush from the counter beside her.

"Nothing," she says, busying herself with pushing her clutter (night cream, day cream, minimiser, maximiser, moisturiser) out of Jeremy's way. "It's Dan's birthday today."

"I know. We bought him a book and a card, remember? Last night?"

"Has he said anything to you about it?"

"His birthday or the present, because--"

"Or anything." She tries to sound innocent and unenquiring, but. Well.

Jeremy rolls his eyes and sticks his toothbrush in his mouth.

"Fine," Natalie says, throwing her hands up. "Avoid. I don't care."

She leaves the bathroom, wondering how Dan got to be thirty-four; how he's survived it. She is only thirty, and she feels like her entire life is already over. In their bedroom, she pulls slacks and a sweater out of her dresser. She sheds her t-shirt and underwear, puts on clean panties, a bra, the rest of her clothes, not thinking how unfair it is that Dan seems to have lost weight and she has recently realised she will never get rid of the five pounds she has acquired in the last few years. She stands at her cherrywood dresser, staring at a pair of earrings and her wedding ring. She slides the platinum hooks into her ears and the platinum ring over the appropriate finger.

She goes out to put coffee in their travel mugs just as Jeremy is coming out of the bathroom to get dressed.

They do this every workday morning. Sometimes she finds the routine comforting. Sometimes she feels like a living person in a world of zombies, faking a zombie persona so her brains don't get eaten.

 

* * *

 

Natalie brushes past him in the hallway outside their bedroom. Jeremy wants to touch her arm, her face. Anything.

He knows it's not his fault that she always looks like she's about to cry. He knows it's not his fault that she feels her life is out of control, at a dead stop. If she feels that. How can he know? They hardly ever talk anymore, and it's kind of funny that she's asking him if Dan's mentioned his birthday, because he's quite sure he hasn't exchanged more than a dozen words with Dan in the last week. All of those were probably about the bloody Cardinals, anyway.

He could almost chalk it up to everybody missing Casey, but Casey has been gone for a long time. He could almost chalk it up to the fact that they're all still in shock, but--Casey has been gone for a long time.

Jeremy tucks in his dress shirt and tries to pick out a decent tie for once in his life.

 

* * *

 

There are fourteen other women in Monica's tae bo class, all of them with points on their shoulders and at their wrists, the same as Monica herself. Sweat is running down her back, down her neck, pooling in her ears, which is the most annoying thing ever. She is thinking about work while the instructor is yelling at her and her compatriots. She is grateful to still have a job, and that it pays well enough for her to have a membership at a decent gym, for her to rent a parking space under her apartment building. She is thinking about the new summer backdrop on the set and when Dana is going to schedule a colour test so she can get some feedback about bleeding colours and what patterns are off-limits. She is thinking about how awesome it is that the co-hosts, the whole roster of them, are women who know how to dress themselves. She does miss the perfect sharp angle of the shoulder on Casey's suit jackets, but she likes--she likes being able to focus. She is thinking about when Dan will deliver his new suits so she can label and store them properly.

She is thinking about how stringy he looks lately, how she caught herself comparing him to a rooster or a crow the other day--the bony arch of his neck, the way he stands at attention when he's offended or concentrating. The way he gestures with a pen during the show, so close to getting ink on his clothes.

She decides, at the same time that she can hear the laboured breathing of the other women and the instructor, but not her own, that she has to speak to him today. He can't just keep buying new suits--he has to take care of himself. She will be calm, she will be gentle. She won't yell, even though he will be obtuse and nitpicky and she will be sorely tempted to yell. He has to take care of himself. The point stands.

If he works himself to death, they'll all be out of work.

As one, Monica and the fourteen other women in her tae bo class turn around. Monica closes her eyes, muscles burning.

 

* * *

 

In an office on the seventeenth floor of a shiny glass building on Sixth Avenue, Molly closes her office door behind her 10:30 client and leans her forehead against it. After a moment, she goes back to her desk and sits down. She takes off her glasses and cleans them with a white handkerchief.

One of her clients is eighty-seven, a retired tailor. He sews handkerchiefs to pass the time. He is a recovering alcoholic, and comes to her to talk about all the times he yelled at his kids and hit his wife when he was drunk. He is one of the ones who thinks he's the worst person she has to talk to in a day.

At eight this evening she has an appointment with a B-list celebrity. He's another of those. As if being, at best, peripherally involved in your brother's tragic death fifteen years ago is nearly as bad as actually physically drowning him when he was two and you were six.

This B-list celebrity has been coming to see her twice a week for the last year. He saw two therapists before her. She knows the first relationship ended badly--and she does think it was a relationship, though probably never consummated; this client tends to sexualise his interactions with women in order to simplify them, to clarify his motives and hopefully understand theirs, which is ridiculous, but she hasn't told him that. He has told her that he stopped seeing the first therapist on the advice of his boss--"My boss's boss, actually. My boss's ex-boss, if you want to get really technical. But I don't think you do."

Molly has been very clear, from the first time she met him, that she will not stand for flirting, slight-of-hand, or avoidance. The sly little smile he gives her sometimes is a forgivable habit, though. She never reacts to it at all.

She thinks the second therapist was probably over-insightful and under-cautious. The second therapist probably said something about seeing this client twice a week every week, being paid a thousand dollars a month for that time, and never actually talking about what's killing him, what's really destroying him from the inside. The second therapist probably pushed.

Molly's a little more circumspect than that. She's not stupid, no, but she's discreet, and she's done her research on this client. Discreetly. And she's been doing this for a long, long time. She knows--nearly--every secret a person can possibly keep.

She's kept a few, herself. She would keep his, too, in that enormous vault at the back of her mind, but he's naturally mistrustful. He's made himself that way, and it happened long before she met him. Having an inappropriate relationship with his first therapist didn't help his trust issues, undoubtedly.

Her desk clock chimes gently, sweetly, to let her know that she's got five minutes before her next client. She puts her glasses back on and stands up, straightening the lapels on her jacket.

 

* * *

 

Isaac was there. When America tilted and sent Casey (and Charlie. And Lisa) sliding across the country into Southern California, he was there, leaning heavily on his cane. He remembers that day, quite clearly, quite sharply. It was one of the first days that non-stop transcontinental flights were running again. He remembers the quiet terror on Charlie's face, sadly. He remembers how stony Dan was, how cold, and how Casey just shook his hand and said, "Be seeing you," and Dan nodded with a bitter smile.

He remembers Dana crying and laughing through her tears, fingers clutching sharply at Casey's back when he hugged her goodbye. Natalie putting a Lakers cap, stiff with newness, on Casey's head, and dropping an enormous jersey over Charlie's. He remembers Lisa's pinched smile. He didn't know her very well, but he thought she was probably terrified too--terrified enough to take her son across his known world and drag Casey along behind.

Then the time came, finally, for the McCalls to start the long journey through security, and there was a last round of hugs and Natalie started crying too, squeezing Jeremy's hand like a rosary.

Lisa took Charlie's hand and he waved at them and went with her towards the first make-shift check-point. Everybody waved back. Casey lifted his hand and smiled without showing his teeth and then turned his back and followed. Isaac put both of his hands on his cane. He'd seen enough people he loved go away to know that it wasn't the end of the world. But, lord knows, it always feels just like it.

Dana offered to buy drinks (at nine in the morning, but this is New York) and he accepted, along with Natalie and Jeremy, but Dan shook his head.

He stayed, staring into the airport. Isaac doesn't know how long or why, not for certain, and he's never asked. He never will.

 

* * *

 

When Dan refuses to have lunch with her on his _birthday_ , Dana decides that enough is enough, and she tells him so. She doesn't yell, though. She tries very hard, mostly successfully, to stay calm, Dan looking off over her shoulder, over her head.

"I can take care of myself, Dana," he says in the middle of her saying something, as if she was done talking, and they look at each other with surprise on their faces.

"Obviously not, Dan," she sputters, and continues, aware that she's not really scolding him for not eating, nor for being listless, nor for acting like he hasn't known all of them for years and years.

"You are a grown man, ostensibly, with a very important job, and you have to pay attention--"

She doesn't know why she's scolding him, she doesn't--he rolls his eyes, and that really pisses her off, and she wants to scream and cry and tell him she wishes he'd left instead too. She'd rather have Casey, she would. But she doesn't say that. She pleads with him instead.

After he walks away from her, hands in his pockets, shaking his head, she wonders if he wanted her to yell, if he wanted her to wake him up.

She wrings her hands in the bullpen and then goes to make sure the bakery will have her cake ready for five.

 

* * *

 

Dana carefully cuts the pavlova in the conference room after the six o'clock rundown. A dozen slices. Senior production and tonight's on-air talent. Tina takes her slice and a plastic fork and gives Dan a wide, fake-bright smile.

Dan gives his showtime smile back, then resumes picking at his cake, looking less than impressed with the whole production.

"Why are you scraping the whipped cream off?" Natalie asks, scandalised.

"Too many carbs," he mutters.

Kim gasps. "There are no carbs in whipped cream," she says sternly. She sticks her fork into the froth of excess whip on Dan's plate and starts eating it.

Natalie smiles at Dan, hoping he'll smile back, but he just shakes his head at them. She puts her fork in too.

 

* * *

 

After the show, Jeremy stays at his seat in the control room until the lights are turned off in the studio, pretending to type a letter to his sister. The sound of them going out is loud, portentous. He can see his reflection in the dark bank of monitors in front of him.

"What are you doing?" Natalie asks, behind him.

"Writing a letter to Louise."

She comes up beside him and touches his shoulder. She's going to ask him what's wrong, and that's wrong.

"You're not old," he says, taking a stab in the dark. "Your life is not over. You have a job most smart women would kill for, great friends, and--I love you."

"I'm not where I wanted to be at thirty--where I _want_ to be." Her hand tightens, then falls away.

Jeremy stands up quickly and turns, grabs her hand--"Natalie--"

"I love you too," she says, pitifully, "I just--feel like everything is on a collision course with the universe, and I can't--you can't. The whole world is falling apart, Jeremy, we're going to hell in a handbasket, and I don't know who's driving and--"

She stops to sob but he pulls her into a hug, so she cries all over his shirt instead of leaving him.

 

* * *

 

After his show, Casey changes into street clothes and zips his suit up in a garment bag to take home. He's gotten used to being without a wardrobe department, or so he keeps telling himself. And then he matches a grey tie to a grey jacket, or so he thinks, and everybody starts yelling at him.

He locks his dressing room behind him and says goodnight to everybody still in the studio, then makes his way to the parking lot. The air is slightly heavy with heat, humidity. When he gets onto the freeway in his car, not new anymore, he takes his phone out of his pocket and looks up Dan's phone number. Unsafe, a habit, LA.

He'd called him at Christmas. They'd only spoken for a few minutes. It doesn't matter how many times they say he is forgiven for leaving, Casey will always feel like a traitor, a deserter. Always will feel blamed.

He's looking at his thumb on the "Send" button, at Dan's number on the screen, looking just a little too long, then there is a blaring horn and the crash.

 

End.


End file.
